Editorial: Encourage use of empty South Jersey stores

Black Friday shoppers get an early start to their holiday shopping at Cumberland Mall in Vineland at midnight Friday, November 23, 2012. (Staff Photo by Cindy Hepner/South Jersey Times)

It’s an old (but often true) joke in New Jersey that county governments never met a vacant supermarket they didn’t like.

At some point, though, social service boards, health clinics can no longer absorb the supply of hulking retail carcasses. The saturation point likely came in South Jersey when the Great Recession further culled an already “overstored” herd. There are only so many library expansions and, besides, public-sector solutions take retail space off the property tax rolls.

Now, however, things are looking better in retail. Are new shops and eateries exhausting the supply of seemingly abandoned strip malls? Too often, they’re “building new,” in the same shopping corridors with empty buildings.

There are really two problems here. One is failure to encourage re-use of empty spaces for new stores. The other is finding ways to keep existing stores open to prevent more vacancies.

A recent Times survey of 15 shopping plazas on Egg Harbor and Hurffville-Cross Keys roads in Washington Township found about 22 percent of the storefronts vacant. Meanwhile, the township council just rejected tax breaks for a massive mixed-use development with — of course — lots of commercial space.

You can see the same trends along Delsea Drive in the Vineland/Millville area, and especially in the ring of strip centers around the Deptford Mall. It’s become common there for chains to exit “old” centers and leapfrog to new ones. “Mom and Pop” stores in the older location see a decline in traffic, and they soon close too.

It’s one good reason to reform New Jersey property taxes, a huge expense for brick-and-mortar retailers. It isn’t just about homeowners.

Meanwhile, what about some store-retention strategies, such as business plan assistance? Also, target incentives toward refilling vacant shops. Why give tax breaks to new construction when there are so many “empties?”

Local policies can’t keep a national chain from going belly-up, but they can stop the florist or pizza place next door to “No-Longer-Mart” or “Groceries weR Us” from going down with them.